A Conversation with a Chinese

In the year 1723, there was a Chinese in Holland, who was both a learned
man and a merchant, two things that ought by no means to be
incompatible; but which, thanks to the profound respect that is shown to
money, and the little regard that the human species pay to merit, have
become so among us.

This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, happened to be in a bookseller's
shop at the same time that some literati were assembled there. He asked
for a book; they offered him Bossuet's Universal History, badly
translated. At the title Universal History—

"How pleased am I," cried the Oriental, "to have met with this book. I
shall now see what is said of our great empire; of a nation that has
subsisted for upwards of fifty thousand years; of that long dynasty of
emperors who have governed us for such a number of ages. I shall see
what these Europeans think of the religion of our literati, and of that
pure and simple worship we pay to the Supreme Being. What a pleasure
will it be for me to find how they speak of our arts, many of which are
of a more ancient date with us than the eras of all the kingdoms of
Europe! I fancy the author will be greatly mistaken in relation to the
war we had about twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-two years
ago, with the martial people of Tonquin and Japan, as well as the solemn
embassy that the powerful emperor of Mogulitian sent to request a body
of laws from us in the year of the world 500000000000079123450000."

"Lord bless you," said one of the literati, "there is hardly any mention
made of that nation in this world, the only nation considered is that
marvelous people, the Jews."

"The Jews!" said the Chinese, "those people then must certainly be
masters of three parts of the globe at least."

"They hope to be so some day," answered the other; "but at present they
are those pedlars you see going about here with toys and nicknacks, and
who sometimes do us the honor to clip our gold and silver."

"Surely you are not serious," exclaimed the Chinese. "Could those people
ever have been in possession of a vast empire?"

Here I joined in the conversation, and told him that for a few years
they were in possession of a small country to themselves; but that we
were not to judge of a people from the extent of their dominions, any
more than of a man by his riches.

"But does not this book take notice of some other nations?" demanded the
man of letters.

"Undoubtedly," replied a learned gentleman who stood at my elbow; "it
treats largely of a small country about sixty leagues wide, called
Egypt, in which it is said that there is a lake of one hundred and fifty
leagues in circumference, made by the hands of man."

"My God!" exclaimed the Chinese, "a lake of one hundred and fifty
leagues in circumference within a spot of ground only sixty leagues
wide! This is very curious!"

"The inhabitants of that country," continued the doctor, "were all
sages."

"What happy times were those!" cried the Chinese; "but is that all?"

"No," replied the other, "there is mention made of those famous people
the Greeks."

"Greeks! Greeks!" said the Asiatic, "who are those Greeks?"

"Why," replied the philosopher, "they were masters of a little province,
about the two hundredth part as large as China, but whose fame spread
over the whole world."

"Indeed!" said the Chinese, with an air of openness and ingenuousness;
"I declare I never heard the least mention of these people, either in
the Mogul's country, in Japan, or in Great Tartary."

"Oh, the barbarian! the ignorant creature!" cried out our sage very
politely. "Why then, I suppose you know nothing of Epaminondas the
Theban, nor of the Pierian Heaven, nor the names of Achilles's two
horses, nor of Silenus's ass? You have never heard speak of Jupiter, nor
of Diogenes, nor of Lais, nor of Cybele, nor of—"

"I am very much afraid," said the learned Oriental, interrupting him,
"that you know nothing of that eternally memorable adventure of the
famous Xixofon Concochigramki, nor of the masteries of the great
Fi-psi-hi-hi! But pray tell me what other unknown things does this
Universal History treat of?"

Upon this my learned neighbor harangued for a quarter of an hour
together about the Roman republic, and when he came to Julius Cęsar the
Chinese stopped him, and very gravely said.

"I think I have heard of him, was he not a Turk?"

"How!" cried our sage in a fury, "don't you so much as know the
difference between Pagans, Christians, and Mahometans? Did you never
hear of Constantine? Do you know nothing of the history of the popes?"

"We have heard something confusedly of one Mahomet," replied the
Asiatic.

"It is surely impossible," said the other, "but that you must have heard
at least of Luther, Zuinglius, Bellarmin, and colampadius."

"I shall never remember all those names," said the Chinese, and so
saying he quitted the shop, and went to sell a large quantity of Pekoa
tea, and fine calico, and then after purchasing what merchandise he
required, set sail for his own country, adoring Tien, and recommending
himself to Confucius.

As to myself, the conversation I had been witness to plainly discovered
to me the nature of vain glory; and I could not forbear exclaiming:

"Since Cęsar and Jupiter are names unknown to the finest, most ancient,
most extensive, most populous, and most civilized kingdom in the
universe, it becomes ye well, O ye rulers of petty states! ye pulpit
orators of a narrow parish, or a little town! ye doctors of Salamanca,
or of Bourges! ye trifling authors, and ye heavy commentators!—it
becomes you well, indeed, to aspire to fame and immortality."

[1] According to Chambers' work on The British Museum, from
which the above cuts are copied, "the Chinese, are a vast nation of some
300,000,000 of souls, nearly a third part of the whole human race. The
entire population is subject to the supreme and despotic authority of a
single hereditary ruler who resides at Pekin, the chief city of the
whole empire. Under him the government is administered by a descending
hierarchy of officials or mandarins, who are chosen from all ranks of
the people, according to their talents as displayed in the course, first
of their education at school and college, and afterwards of their public
life. The officials are, in short, the men in highest repute for
scholarship and accomplishments in the empire; and the whole system of
the government is that of promotion upwards from the ranks of the
people, according to merit. The Chinese generally are remarkable for
common sense, orderliness, and frugal prudential habits. Printing and
paper being cheap among them, and education universal, they have an
immense literature, chiefly in the departments of the drama, the novel,
and the moral essay; their best writers of fiction are said to resemble
Richardson in style, and their best moralists Franklin. The greatest
name in their literature, or indeed in their history, is that of
Confucius, a philosopher and religious teacher who lived about 500 years
B.C., and who left a number of books expounding and enforcing the great
maxims of morality. During all the revolutions that have since elapsed,
the doctrines of Confucius have retained their hold of the Chinese mind,
and the religion of China consists in little more than an attachment to
these doctrines, and a veneration for their founder. With abstract
notions of the Deity, and of the destiny of man when he quits this life,
the Chinese do not trouble themselves; a moral, correct life, and
especially an honorable discharge of the duties of a son and a citizen,
is the whole aim of their piety. There are, however, some voluntary
sects among them, who superinduce articles of speculative belief on the
prosaic code of morality established by Confucius; and forms of
religious worship are practised over the whole country under the direct
sanction of the government. There are a number of figures, larger and
smaller, of Chinese divinities, some of which are very neatly carved in
ivory, wood, and stone. With what precise feelings the more educated
Chinese address these images in prayer—whether they look upon them as
symbols, or whether, like Polytheists generally, they actually view the
carved figures themselves as gifted with powers—it would be difficult
to say; the mass of the people, however, probably never ask the
question, but, from the mere force of custom, come to regard such
objects as the figure of Kwan-yin, the goddess of mercy, and the larger
gilt figures of the god and goddess, precisely as the Polytheistic
Greeks or Romans regarded their statues in their temples; that is, as
real divinities with power for good or evil. The religious sentiment,
however, sits very lightly on the Chinese. Absence of any feeling of the
supernatural is perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Chinese
character.

"Buddhism, was founded, as is generally believed, some centuries before
Christ by a Hindoo prince and sage named Gautama. As originally
propounded, Buddhism is supposed to have been a purer and more
reasonable form of faith than Brahminism, recognising more clearly the
spiritual and moral aims of religion; but, having been expelled from
Hindostan during the early centuries of our era, after having undergone
severe persecution from the Brahmins—at whose power it struck, by
proscribing the system of castes—-it sought refuge in the eastern
peninsula, Ceylon, Thibet, Japan, and China, where it has been modified
and corrupted into various forms."—E.

ANDROGYNOUS DEITIES.

The ancients ascribed the existence of the universe to the fiat of
omnipotence. Almighty power conjoined with infinite wisdom had
produced the world and all that it inhabits. Man, the head of
visible creation, was formed in the image of the gods, but the gods
only were endowed with generative or creative power. These gods
were androgynous—that is, male and female—containing in one
person both the paternal and maternal attributes. Plato taught that
mankind, like the gods, were originally androgynous, and Moses
tells us that Eve, in matured wisdom and beauty, sprang forth from
the side of Adam, even as

"From great Jove's head, the armed Minerva sprung
With awful shout."

"The thought of God as the Divine Mother," says a sincere and
intelligent clergyman in a sermon recently published, "is a very
ancient one, found in the most early nature worships." "We thank
Thee O God," says the Rev. Theodore Parker, "that Thou art our
Father and our Mother." "O God," says St. Augustine, "Thou art the
Father, Thou the Mother of Thy children."

The preceding illustration of the birth of Minerva,—the goddess of
wisdom,—i.e. wisdom issuing from the brain of Jove, is from
Falkener's Museum of Classical Antiquities. It is taken from an
ancient Etruscan patera (mirror), now in the Museum at Bologna, and
is supposed to have been copied from the pediment of the eastern or
main entrance to the Parthenon, or temple of Minerva. This pediment
was the work of Phidias, and, like so many of the former monuments
of ancient art and civilization, is now forever lost to mankind.

"The goddess," says the distinguished architect and antiquary M. De
Quincy, "is shown issuing from the head of Jupiter. She has a
helmet on her head, buckler on her arm, and spear in her hand.
Jupiter is seated, holding a sceptre in one hand and a thunderbolt
in the other. On the right of the new born goddess is Juno, whose
arms are elevated, and who seems to have assisted at the
extraordinary childbirth. On the left of Jupiter is Venus,
recognizable by a sprig of myrtle and a dove. Behind Juno is
Vulcan, still armed with the axe which has cleft the head of the
god, and seeming to regard with admiration the success of his
operations."

The engraving representing the birth of Eve, is from the Speculum
Salutis, or the Mirror of Salvation, of which many manuscript
copies were issued, for the instruction of the mendicant friars,
between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. "Heineken describes a
copy in the imperial library of Vienna, which he attributes to the
twelfth century. He says, such was the popularity of the work with
the Benedictines that almost every monastery possessed a copy of
it. Of the four manuscript copies owned by the British Museum, one
is supposed to have been written in the thirteenth century, another
copy is in the Flemish writing of the fifteenth century." This
work, which contains several engravings and forty-five chapters of
barbarous Latin rhymes, presents a good illustration of Christian
art as it existed during the period immediately preceding the
revival of letters, when the barbarism and ignorance of the dark
ages had supplanted the artistic culture of ancient Greece and
Rome.

Unprejudiced readers will doubtless admit that the birth of Minerva
from the brain of Jove greatly resembles the birth of Eve from the
side of Adam, and these myths show the analogy existing between the
Jewish and Pagan mythologies; but the design and execution of the
respective engravings, show the retrogression in art that had taken
place between the time of the immortal Phidias and that of Pope
Innocent III.[1]—between Pagan civilization as it existed prior to
the Christian era, and the medieval barbarism of the successors of
St. Peter.

"God created man in his own image," says Godfrey Higgins in the
Anacalypsis, (vol. 2, p. 397.) "Everything was supposed to be in
the image of God; and thus man was created double—the male and
female in one person, or androgynous like God. By some uninitiated
Jews, of about the time of Christ, this double being was supposed
to have been created back to back [see the bearded Bacchus and
Ariadne on the following page]; but I believe, from looking at the
twins in all ancient zodiacs, it was side by side; precisely as we
have seen the Siamese boys,—but still male and female.
Besides, the book of Genesis implies that they were side by side,
by the woman being taken from the side of man. Among the Indians
the same doctrine is found, as we might expect."

"We must rise to man," says the eloquent clergyman previously
referred to, "in order to know rightly what God is. Humanity
plainly images a power which is at once the source and pattern of
the womanly as well as of the manly qualities, inasmuch as woman as
well as man is needed to fill out the idea of humanity. The womanly
traits—pity, forgiveness, gentleness, patience, sympathy,
unselfishness—are as worthy of the Divine Being as the manly
traits."—E.

[1] "It was," says Gibbon, "at the feet of his legate that
John of England surrendered his crown; and Innocent may boast of
the two most signal triumphs over sense and humanity, the
establishment of transsubstantiation, and the origin of the
inquisition."